The specification relates to data processing systems. In particular, the specification relates to a system and method for estimating street parking availability for a user.
Finding parking in many urban areas around the world is a difficult task. According to one estimate, 30% of traffic in New York City is caused by drivers simply looking for available parking on the streets. If drivers knew where there was available parking, this traffic would disappear and drivers would spend less time and fuel looking for parking.
There are several applications and technologies that attempt to solve this problem. Many companies measure parking by placing sensors beneath parking spots that detect when a car is parked above. However, this method is problematic because the sensors are often expensive to install and thus the method does not scale to the millions of miles of streets in the United States.
There are also many spot sharing systems in which groups of drivers notify where and when they vacate sports so that other drivers using the systems will be able to immediately identify an open spot and park there directly. However, a fatal flaw with these systems is that a driver who isn't using the systems can park in a spot vacated by a user and thus render the spot information inconsistent. Furthermore, these community-based systems are often manual and require active user participation to report open spots. In practice, few users are motivated to report open sports to the community.